Please read the introductory page in the Real Botany of Desire for the background to why I’m listing the observed insect favourite flowers that bloom during this month, and which seem to be the most popular with the groups of insects which frequent our garden. Common Ivy, Hedera helix, is certainly one native flower I’d recommend for including in any garden as an insect-friendly flower for this late in the year.

If reading the introductory page is a click too far, then briefly, there’s a huge issue with loss of wild flowers as agriculture intensifies and mono-cultures prevail. This impacts on all the insects which rely on flowers as food sources. But all flowers aren’t equal in their appeal to insects, or particular groups of insects, (e.g. honey bees, bumblebees, hover flies, moths, butterflies) and many nursery-bred plants have been designed to be attractive to our senses, not insects. Some flowers are useful as both pollen and nectar sources (P, N) whereas others just seem to provide one of these insect foodstuffs, and I’ll try to include this information with the images. So this simple record is to help gardeners think about this issue, and maybe plant more flowers to help our very diverse native insect groups. I’ve found that many of the best plants seem to be some of our native wildflowers which can in other respects have real garden merit. Equally, there are many plants from the other side of the globe which are preferentially favoured over native flowers at certain times of the year – there is no simple easy guide to their relative appeal. The positive spin-offs from incorporating more insect-friendly flowers in our gardens apart from the appeal of seeing the insects themselves will be better pollination of our crops, and more varied wildlife in our gardens, since insects are at the bottom of many animal food chains.

It’s certainly not exhaustive, and if you know other flowers which have equal appeal, which aren’t listed here, do please let me know, and I’ll try them up here as well. This work started a couple of years before my blog began in March 2011, but previous to that I’d produced the UK’s first DVD-ROM guide to Garden Moths “In A Different Light”. This project attempts to widen that work in a more general way.

Not much to record in the garden for the next 3 months, since of course with falling temperatures there will be few insects around in a ‘normal’ year. However perhaps the definition of ‘normal’ will need to change with changing weather patterns. As I’ve finally got around to updating this page, over 10 years after I first posted it, we’ve just had the warmest October (since records began), with a daily mean temperature over 2 degrees C higher than the recent 30-year average. Very few of our plants flower for the first time in November, but in a mild year like 2023 with no frosts by the middle of the month quite a few flowers remain from those blooming in October, so do check that month’s listings.

Finally, as I mention elsewhere, the actual number of flowers of a single plant type growing together, and their position in the garden (e.g. sun or shade), can have a big impact on how favoured the flowers are by your garden’s insect population – probably because sun and warmth can affect nectar and pollen production and release.

Beginning to bloom with us in November are Camellia sasanqua, and they do seem to attract a number of the small flies which are still around on mild days. This cultivar is C. sasanqua ‘Narumigata’. But the autumn of 2011/12 was the first and only time so far that these plants have flowered with us. This was the only plant, we’ve ever grown which began to flower in November and had any real insect appeal. However, we have since removed it, since its flowering was so poor.

In contrast to the fabulous Persicaria vacciniifolia, which is still going strong and producing new flower spikes in mid-November 2023, as you can see in the short video below.

Most of these plants have to be sited where they’ll be in full sun at this time of the year between about 11.00am and 2.30pm if they’re going to be attractive to any insects able to forage on any rare, warm or sunny days with light winds.

Other potentially useful insect-friendly flowers still around are listed below, with images, but they rarely seem to get many visits, in part because weather windows are always fleeting in the generally grey, cool, and often wet weather.

Geranium procurrens, still going, and like P. vacciniifolia, a wonderful long flowering nectar source for many insects, particularly when the sun shines.

Dahlia merckii, with no frosts to cut it down, still looks lovely and gets the odd, late bumblebee visitor.

Fuchsia magellanica ‘Purple Dome’ has taken a long time to establish, and is much later flowering than our more numerous F. magellanica ‘Duchy of Cornwall seedling’ plants, but it does still get late smaller bumblebee visitors.

Persicaria amplexicaulis still flowers well in areas where I can leave it alone – many clumps have to be cut back in mid-November to allow early snowdrops to push through.

Mahonia nitens ‘Cabaret’ is a recently acquired, named, low growing form which we bought after seeing a plant flowering covered in honey bees, somewhere! It’s low growing and probably a little shaded to be of great value, but it’s having a second flush of flowers now, in mid-November.

Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ is another late flowering hybrid Mahonia which we planted quite recently, and by November 2025 was flowering in sufficient profusion to attract a few honey bees in more benign weather moments from mid-November onwards, even in very damp grey conditions.

Last updated 13/11/2025